Second AG batch.. HELP! Batch Sparging

sigaas · 01-13-2007, 03:30 AM

I'm going to try my second batch of AG this weekend but I'm confused about how much grain I should be using.

I like this recipe here.

This webpage seems to indicated I need to scale my grain by 1.16 in order to achieve the desired results as shown in the recipe.

Can anyone help me out here? The dennybrew page (here) references the other site, but doesn't mention anything about needing to scale my recipe for batch sparging.

I have other questions about the amount of water to use as well, but I'll save those until I can figure out how much grain I need!

Blender · 01-13-2007, 03:33 AM

You need to have an idea of your efficiency in mashing and then you can scale the grist to batch size. Do you know how you did the first time?

sigaas · 01-13-2007, 03:43 AM

Not really, no. I made too many mistakes. The first batch was a disaster and so I'm essentially starting from scratch.

**the_bird** · 01-13-2007, 03:45 AM

There's no way to have a general rule of thumb, it depends entirely on your setup and techniques. Some people get higher efficiency from batch sparges than from fly sparging. The variation across brewers is too big. I'd forumulate the recipe with an assumption of around 70% efficiency, plug your stuff into ProMash or BeerSmith to figure the amount of base malt you need to hit your target OG.

sigaas · 01-13-2007, 03:49 AM

I've downloaded a copy of promash, but I'm not very good using it. Is there any chance you can plug the numbers for me and let me know what you get? I'd like to try it myself and compare it to what experts get to see if I'm doing it right.

Blender · 01-13-2007, 03:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_bird

There's no way to have a general rule of thumb, it depends entirely on your setup and techniques. Some people get higher efficiency from batch sparges than from fly sparging. The variation across brewers is too big. I'd forumulate the recipe with an assumption of around 70% efficiency, plug your stuff into ProMash or BeerSmith to figure the amount of base malt you need to hit your target OG.

I would do the same only set efficiency for 65%. Or have some extract around for adjustments. I can scale your recipe later when I'm home if you don't have software.

How did you screw up?

**the_bird** · 01-13-2007, 03:54 AM

True, I hit 65% the first time, that's a better assumption. I'm using 70% on this batch, but yeah, assume a little lower.

sigaas · 01-13-2007, 03:56 AM

Let me count the ways..

1) It turns out my thermometer is off by 4 degrees. So when I heated up my strike water it was 4 degrees too high.

2) When I added the water to the grain, I thought I had overshot, so I added some cold water. But added too much, then had to add more hot water. In other words, my mash thickness was WAY too high.

3) When I did my first sparge, I didn't vorlauf enough. I ended up with too much grist in my wort.

4) When I added my second sparge water, again my thermometer was too high so the water was too high a temp.

5) I ended up with around 4 gals of wurt after it cooled. I don't know why. Obviously quite a bit evaporated during the cool process.

**the_bird** · 01-13-2007, 03:58 AM

I did #2, started a bit thread about it here about the effects of a thin mash combined with a cool mash temp (or hot mash temp, can't recall specifically). I also noticed that one of my two digitial probe thermometers was off by 20 degrees last time, so I had to make an educated guess which one was right. I seem to have guessed right, the beer seems fine.

sigaas · 01-13-2007, 04:05 AM

When I'm using promash, I've entered the grain bill as shown in the recipe and it calculates a SG for me based on my efficiency. Is there a way to get it to tell me what the grain bill should be based on a SG and efficiency? Or do I just need to keep adjusting the grain bill until the SG is right?